The Easter Rising 1916 - Molly's Diary (Hands-on History)

by Patricia Murphy

  Those who made it to the bridge by sheer force of numbers were met with more hails of bullets, and were falling like ninepins in a bowling alley. The rebels fired volley after volley into the khaki ranks. The men fell. They could not return fire, I later learned, for such was their haste departing from England, and their unpreparedness for battle, that their rifles were unloaded.

  The sounds and smells were awful. Groans, screams, the metallic scent of blood. Dozens of khaki-clad bodies lay on the bridge, piled on top of each other.

  A Saint John’s Ambulanceman called Mike joined us, his face flushed.

  “Thank goodness you’re here,” he said. “They were sitting ducks. The regiment was in full military kit and marching into the city. Barely trained they are, from the slums of Nottingham and Derby. Some have never fired a gun.”

  “There are so many injured and dying,” said Dr Lumsden, aghast. “Our hospitals will be overwhelmed.”

  “The British soliders were pushed forward by their officers with fixed bayonets and slaughtered like cattle. Some idiot of a general is on the phone giving them orders to keep going!”

  The firing continued. “We will have to have a ceasefire to rescue the injured,” Dr Lumsden said.

  “The rebels are holed up in 25 Northumberland Street. And Clanwilliam House.”

  I looked through the window of the ambulance. I thought I also saw firing from Boland’s Mill across the way and Robert’s Builders Yard.

  Dr Ella said she would go to the barricade at the lower bridge crossing to Percy Place to see if she could find a senior British Army Officer.

  But then PJ, who had been speaking to some of the other crews, ran up to give some sad news to Dr Ella and Dr Lumsden.

  “Holden Stodart has been shot dead at Carisbrooke House when going to the aid of a British Soldier,” he said, his hat in his hand.

  Holden Stodart was Commander of the Saint John’s Ambulance.

  Tears sprang to Dr Ella’s eyes. “A brave man. He leaves a young wife and young child. He worked for Guinness Brewery.”

  Dr Lumsden was visibly shaken. “We must try to get him a pension.”

  PJ raked his hand through his fair hair and composed himself. “He died as he lived, doing his duty.”

  “Molly, stay here,” Dr Ella said, wiping her tears. “You can help with First Aid when they ferry the injured back to the ambulance.”

  But Dr Lumsden could wait no more. When he heard a lull in the firing, he rushed onto the bridge trailing a white flag. He was the bravest man I ever saw, and I had seen many brave people. He coolly and calmly knelt in the middle of the road, attending to the wounded soldiers, feeling pulses to check the live from the dead, while bullets were fired from the houses on both sides. My heart was in my mouth, waiting to see if he could bring the injured to safety.

  “Medics on the bridge. Hold fire!” a voice rang out.

  Rebels and soldiers both took up the call. Soon there was a hush.

  A group of nurses arrived from Patrick Dun’s Hospital, Mother’s friend Miss Huxley among them. I waved to her and she gave me a nod, then spoke to the nurses with her. There was a break in the firing. A proper ceasefire. Dr Lumsden stood up, supporting an injured soldier, walked toward us and waved to us on the side of the bridge.

  As if with one body, all of the nurses and Saint John’s Ambulance, led by Miss Huxley rushed onto the bridge. Nurses ran with white sheets and quilts to ferry up the injured as we did not have enough stretchers. I pulled out the stretcher from our ambulance and two strong men took it from me. I waited for the injured to be brought to the ambulance. I did not have to wait long.

  “This man has a shoulder injury – dress it and we’ll ferry him to Patrick Dun’s Hospital,” Dr Lumsden said to me, immediately returning to the bridge.

  The soldier, no more than seventeen, his ashen face streaked with blood, winced with the pain. It was heartbreaking seeing him trying to smile.

  “We said ‘bon jour’ to everyone when we arrived. We thought we were in France,” he said, his voice a croaky whisper and his accent soft like a countryboy’s. “My captain, Dietrichsen, is gone. Saw his wife and kids in the crowd at Ballsbridge – she’s Irish and he broke ranks to embrace them. He sent them away from the Zeppelins bombing London. Now one hour later he’s dead!”

  I put his arm in a sling and patched him up as best I could.

  “My mum’s Irish. From Nenagh in Tipperary. Me granddad’s still on the farm,” he said quietly. “I thought I was going to get it in the killing fields of Flanders, not the aul’ sod.” His voice faded to a whisper.

  And then the awful ritual was enacted again and again. As soon as the medics cleared the bridge, the awful shrill whistle sounded and the British soldiers charged the Volunteers’ position. The shots rang out and the wounded and dying lined the bridge. The place was literally swimming in blood.

  It seemed to me hundreds of soldiers lay dead or wounded. The living, who tripped over the dead, lay beside them for cover from the hail of bullets whistling through the air. During a break in the firing, a woman who was the image of Louisa Nolan, the Gaiety girl, ran out from an adjoining house with a jug of water to attend to a fallen British soldier. The combatants mutually withheld their fire. However, many of the wounded lay unattended for hours.

  There was a strange noise from Clanwilliam House that we could hear from where we were parked. Random notes, ping-pinging with some of the shots. It sounded as if a crazy musician was accompanying the slaughter.

  “What is that weird noise?” I asked a British soldier with a flesh wound on his arm.

  He listened for a moment. “It’s a piano – the bullets are snapping the wires,” he smiled grimly. “Death music.”

  And after enough had been mowed down, there was a temporary ceasefire and the doctors and nurses and ambulance workers once more waded in among the fallen.

  I am writing it all down in the hope of exorcising the awful images in my head. For the most part I was behind the firing line, set up at a makeshift First Aid station behind the ambulance. I did what I could to help organize the transport to Patrick Dun’s Hospital as other vehicles arrived. PJ was working flat out as a stretcher-bearer. Dr Lumsden, Dr Ella and Miss Huxley were in the thick of it.

  But there was one young woman I knew who was as brave as the medics. For it was indeed Louisa Nolan on the bridge – a singer and dancer more used to gracing the stage. Her father was former Chief Constable Nolan of Ringsend and he is a friend of Mr Killikelly, Addy and Jane’s father.

  She went calmly though a hail of bullets and carried water and other comforts to the wounded men from the other side of the bridge. It was almost as if she was protected by an invisible shield.

  “I don’t know where you get your courage,” I said to her when she brought a soldier with a shoulder injury to the ambulance.

  “My two sisters are war nurses in England, I have one brother in the army and the other in the navy. My other brother was killed on the Western Front last year,” she said matter of factly. “They are the brave ones. I see my brothers’ faces in every single one of these men and I cannot leave them to die like dogs.”

  Towards evening, just as it seemed we had cleared most of the casualties, Louisa ran to me with great urgency. “There are a group of wounded soldiers in a house just over the bridge. The owner, the grocer little Mr Hayter, is dead. He was shot when he went to help the wounded inside his house. Hurry!”

  PJ was nearby so I called him and he agreed to drive, seeing it was possible to get across. I jumped in the ambulance with Louisa. As the engine was cranked up and we rattled off, she started to sing a song I’d heard her perform on stage only a month before.

  “‘Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do,

  I’m half crazy, all for the love of you.’”

  “‘It won’t be a stylish marriage,’” I joined in, in a faltering voice, as the noise of gunfire pinged off the ambulance.

  “‘We can’t afford a carriage
. . .’” We both laughed at this.

  “‘But you look sweet, upon the seat,

  Of a bicycle made for two!’”

  “We might as well enjoy the song, Molly,” Louisa said sadly. “For there will be no young men left for us to marry.”

  “You are as good a singer as Marcella the Midget Queen,” I blurted out. I was rather in awe of Louisa, having seen her on the stage. For she is very glamorous and pretty, even in a battle.

  “You love the theatre, I can see,” she said and her eyes were smiling.

  “You should be a star,” I babbled.

  “It’s my dream to appear on the West End,” she said. “I’m the featherbrain of the family and it would please my dear old dad.” She laughed softly.

  I reached across and placed a reassuring hand on her arm. “You have the courage of a lion.”

  But the ambulance came to a sudden halt and I was thrown on top of her. She laughed once again but her face was rueful when we got up and opened the door to the new horror that lay ahead.

  PJ drew the car up as close to the house as he could and we crouched behind the vehicle. We inched our way inside the house. I saw PJ wince as a small piece of kerbstone, thrown up by a ricochet, hit him in the cheek.

  Seven soldiers, panting and covered in blood, were inside the house. They were shaking and subdued. One was very badly injured, his uniform drenched with blood from a stomach injury. We moved him first. There was an officer with them who had been shot in the shoulder.

  “It’s worse than the French killing fields,” he said. “For at least there we know where the enemy is. Here they are behind every chimneypot and tree.”

  As we went back in to pick up a soldier with his knee shot off, a hail of gunfire whizzed right past us. It was only when we got back in we saw the bullet-shaped holes in our clothing. I had one in my new coat, clean through the skirt. And Louisa’s had passed through her hat!

  As we got the last wounded man in, and pulled the stretcher in after us, its handle was shot off. Several bullets struck the armoured car as it left.

  “What’s your name?” the soldier asked Louisa. “I am Captain Gerrard. I want to commend you to my superiors.”

  As he shook out his pocket book to take a note, a bullet fell out. This struck us all as very funny, and despite the awful circumstances we all laughed.

  “At this rate, I will never get to my rehearsal in the Gaiety Theatre,” Louisa said and began to sing.

  “‘It’s a long way to Tipperary,

  It’s a long way to go,

  It’s a long way to Tipperary

  To the sweetest girl I know!

  Goodbye, Piccadilly,

  Farewell, Leicester Square . . .’”

  It was her best performance ever. The seven men, broken, bleeding, faces grimy and nerves wrecked, looked at her with adoration. Even if she does get to sing at the West End, she will never have a more appreciative audience.

  In Patrick Dun’s Hospital, we were given bread and butter in the canteen and I confided in Louisa my fears for Jack. She looked at me earnestly. “You must do what you can to save him,” she said. “For brothers cannot be replaced.” A tear slid down her cheek but she brushed it away with the back of her hand.

  I was restless so I offered to wash down the ward and went outside for buckets. A young woman approached me. She was very agitated and wouldn’t go inside.

  “Are there any Volunteers here?” she asked me in urgent tones.

  I told her I hadn’t seen any, though there were maybe hundreds of Sherwood Foresters injured. And just as many of them dead in the morgue and at least four civilians.

  She was very jumpy but held my hand. “But there’s less than twenty rebels taking them on!” She gave me a sharp look, trying to appraise which side I was on.

  “My brother’s in the Fianna,” I said quickly.

  She counted on her fingers, “Jimmy Grace and Malone in Northumberland Street, Reynolds and six volunteers in Clanwilliam House, three in the schoolhouse and another three at Carisbrooke House. There’s another couple at Roberts Builders Yard and roving about . . .”

  I was incredulous. “Less than twenty men have fought this battle?”

  “The Fianna boys had been sent away.”

  “Was one called Jack?”

  “No. They were Paddy Rowe and Michael Byrne. Sure, they sent them out through the skylight at half past two in the morning with messages for Michael Malone’s mother and ours. Paddy Rowe called to us and was gloomy as anything. That’s how I knew where to bring the food. There was another one or two with Commander Reynolds. I don’t know who and they were sent off too.”

  I grabbed her arm. “If you know, you must tell me. One might be my brother.”

  She relaxed. “We just called to Northumberland Road about noon. Meself with May Cullin. Gave them hot steak from Mam.” She lowered her voice again and looked furtive. “My brother is Jimmy Grace and I am out of my mind with worry! I’m Bridget Grace. We had a dispatch about the five hundred troops approaching from Kingstown. They could see them coming.” She told me how they wouldn’t let them in so they put the food and the dispatch through the letterbox.

  “Do you know where the Fianna boys went?”

  “Paddy Rowe, the young lad who gave us the message of Jimmy’s whereabouts was very upset. They were given orders that on no account were they to return to Mount Street. Jimmy was amazed when May and meself turned up, I can tell you, but I had to see him,” She stifled a sob. “My brother and his comrades thought they would meet certain death facing the might of the British army.”

  I placed my hand on her arm and she composed herself.

  “The young fella Reynolds sent away still came back with some fruit cake for the fighters holed up in their positions. I heard that brave young fella went back to Boland’s Bakery,” she said. “That’s their command centre.”

  “I was going to go there any way,” I said.

  But Bridget Grace shook her head. “You’ve no chance. No women allowed there.”

  “Why? Everywhere else I’ve seen women alongside the men.”

  “Imagine seventeen brave volunteers holding off a regiment of hundreds!” said Bridget Grace, her eyes shining.

  “Slaughtering them more like,” said a voice.

  We both jumped. Louisa had crept up on us on her dancer’s feet.

  “They are patriots fighting for Ireland’s freedom,” said Bridget. “They have redeemed Ireland’s honour.”

  “As have the fallen in Flanders,” said Louisa, almost in a whisper. But her eyes were hard, challenging.

  “Shoneens, traitors, fools!” said Bridget fiercely.

  I saw Louisa’s eyes blazing and I thought she would strike her across the face.

  “They are all our brothers,” I cried. “Flesh and blood. A bullet doesn’t know what side you are on before killing you.”

  There was an uneasy silence.

  Both women looked down, each lost in her own thoughts.

  “I came to tell you that the battle is over,” said Louisa. “There are over two hundred British soldiers dead or wounded but only a handful of the rebels. They think some of them even escaped.”

  “Oh merciful God! I pray my brother is among them,” said Bridget. Louisa looked at her with a certain amount of compassion.

  “The officer in charge said they were brave fighters. Astonishing, actually, considering how outnumbered they were,” said Louisa.

  There was a sudden eruption and we looked over towards Mount Street Bridge. Clanwilliam House had burst into flames and lit up the whole sky. We were all subdued but the two women had reached some understanding.

  “You won’t be let into Boland’s Bakery and de Valera won’t see you,” said Bridget. “We have to think of a way to get you in.”

  I took out my scissors and handed it to Louisa.

  & & &

  I am writing this before I go to see de Valera in Boland’s Bakery. I have cut off my hair and put on Jack�
�s clothes, with a cap that Louisa had found somewhere, to help with my disguise. If Mr de Valera won’t see a girl . . . then he will see a boy.

  Thursday 27th April – early afternoon.

  The GPO.

  I waited until 5 o’clock in the morning to get into Boland’s Bakery because martial law has been declared and anyone on the streets between seven at night and five in the morning could be shot.

  All I knew about de Valera, the Long Fella, was that he was reserved and distant. And that he no longer wore a hat because he’d given his to a young soldier.

  The territory they held was a nightmare, spread out over several acres, not compact like the GPO. Mary told me that Boland’s Bakery and the Stores were the base of operations. The rebels had made themselves popular by distributing bread to civilians until the military started shooting at the shawlies. If de Valera had any personal headquarters, it was the dispensary adjoining Grand Canal Street and facing Sir Patrick’s Dun’s Hospital.

  The railway track was next to railway yards, and across the lines there was a disused distillery building. There were several other sheds and outbuildings. Most of the railway track had been torn up. The large grey mill facing down to Ringsend held just a small outpost. The rebels had also seized the gasworks and broken up some of the machinery, which was why large parts of the city had been plunged into darkness. Westland Row Station was also occupied.